Fort Friday!

Happy Fort Friday!

You can share your forts by emailing me, Facebook, or Instagram and tag #allfortheboys and #fortfriday (by contacting me you are giving me permition to share your photo on the blog. Let me know if you want it linked up anywhere) - some are tagging me properly and I'm not able to pull it up again later :( So if you don't see yours here, email it to me!

Love Chickadeez Photography and Maddie from @thiswildidea on Instagram!

An under the stairs imagination wonderland from Joy 2 Journey

A play tent from Not Just a Housewife

A simple treehouse at Apartment Therapy

Have a great weekend!

Spy Week Roundup

To finish off Spy Week I thought I'd link up to some Spy/Detective/Secret Agent party ideas!

Lots of great activities for older kids at Birthday Blueprint

 A fun small detective party at Forget Laundry

A detective party with a mystery to solve from The Princess and The Frog

Love the big scavenger hunt at this party from The Friday Five

An inspiring Hardy Boys party from Joya Baby

If you aren't the DIY type you can find a full set of spy party printables from SIMONEmadeit on Etsy

Spy Week: Part 3 - Fingerprint Matching

Now this might be more detective than spy - but I don't mind if you don't! This is a fun game/activity that can be switched up for just your own kids or a whole party of kids. Start by taking everyone's finger prints. For your own family you can do all the fingers but if you have a whole party of kids you may just want to stick with the thumbs.

There are 2 easy ways to do finger prints. A less messy way is with a regular pencil and Scotch tape. Scribble a square of pencil on a paper and place your thumb into the square.

Then press your thumb onto a small piece of Scotch tape

Peel off the tape and place on a sheet of paper and you have a perfect little finger imprint.

If you want to go the more traditional route  you can use stamp ink

For this game you'll need 2 sets of each finger prints. One is the record to go off of and the other will be for the crime scenes.

For a party you could hide all the presents at some point and place one of the fingerprints in the area. If you're just doing this at home you could place them around the house. Once they find a fingerprint they can try and figure out whose it is using their magnifying glass and their record of prints.

I love how this game can be changed up to meet your needs. For little ones it might be fun just to examine their fingerprints and then hid them around the hosue for them to find (with their magnifying glass of course!)

See more from SPY WEEK

Spy Week: Part 2 - Printable Decoder

Every spy needs a way to send messages to his partner. The circle decoder is the perfect tool!

You can have your kids make their own or print out this one

Cut out the circles

Arrange from smallest to biggest and use a brad in the center to attach them together

Now you're ready to create a message and decode!

You'll need to decide which code you're going to use. You line up the "A" on the smaller circle with the letter on the larger circle that you've chosen. Some do the first letter of the day of the week so today would be W for Wednesday. We wanted to be cryptic so I chose "V" for this one. When writing your message use the outer circle for plain english and the inner circle for the decoded message.

Once the message is written out - mess up the decoder so not just anyone can figure it out. The person decoding will need to match up the "A" with the secret letter (in this case "V") 

You use the outer circle for the plain english message and the inner circle for the decoded message. So in this case he found the "O" on the inner circle and change it to "I" to decode.

Now you have a way to send special messages. To make it harder you can run all the decoded letters together!

See more from SPY WEEK

Spy Week: Part 1

Welcome to SPY WEEK!

Spies (and I'm using this term losely) are sneaky, smart, and crafty. It's fun to pretend to be a spy (especially if you have an older sibling). A spy kit is a fun way to start off spy week and I wanted to show how easily you could pull together a kit like this for a birthday or surprise gift!

The only thing I bought was the magnifying glass and I found it at Michaels in the bargain section. They also had quite a few other fun spy gadgets but I thought I'd show you how to pull stuff out from around the house! The silver thing is a small flashlight. Flashlights are another thing I recommend keeping on hand for playtime. The moustaches and nose glasses I picked up in the party supply section last year. I try to keep an eye out for things like that on clearance to hid in a stash since you never know when you might need them! A little box, suitcase, or bag and you have a complete set!

For our first spy activity we made a laser beam obstacle.

We first saw the idea at Chicken Babies and posted about it HERE. Finally decided to try it on our own with some string and washi tape. I actually liked using the tape because if they touched/pulled on the string too hard it fell down and they had to try again.

(I think at this point we can start making a game out of seeing how many pictures Kona the dog can get herself into)

Such a fun game and reminded us of the Backyardigans Super Spy episode they watched when they were little.

See more from SPY WEEK

Themed weeks!

SO excited to start our themed weeks. I just wanted to make a quick post about the weeks planned (I reserve the right to change) if you have a great idea for one of the weeks or want to guest post or sponsor a giveaway that would fit in to one of the weeks just shoot me an email using the contact form!

I got a ton of great ideas from you all so if one of your weeks didn't make it I will definitely be using the idea for future activities! Travel Tuesday will be posted as it fits into the weeks and Fort Friday will still continue on as usual!

Here are the weeks planned in order starting with this week:

• Spy
• Pirate
• Construction
• Fort
• Art
• Space
• Dinosaurs
• Camping/Cowboy
• Science
• Animals
• Cars
• Gross
• Digital to Real Life

Which week are you most excited about?!

My Home Office and a Giveaway!

As many of you know, I work from home. What you might not know is that my "office" is in the front of the house visible for everyone. There is no closing the door on the mess that is my office, and it is always accessible and used heavily by the boys. While it's not always in perfect condition it does need to be somewhat presentable.

One of my bigger problems right now is enough desktop space. The boys like to do homework on the desk but if I have my calendar, a couple bills, and my camera on the desk it seems that there is zero space left. I was SO excited to put up and try out the Wall Manager from Martha Stewart Home Office with Avery, available exclusively from Staples. I actually already use and love some of the Martha Stewart Home Office products in the office and even sometimes in my scrapbooking so I knew I would love the brand.

I'm usually begging Mr. All for the Boys to hang things up for me so they are perfected to his liking (I'm more of a hang it up and eye it sort of person). The way this wall organizer is made is SO smart.

To hang there is a backing with a small amount of adhesive. Use the built in level to get it straight on the wall. The adhesive keeps it in place and you hammer in with included micro nails. SO easy and so awesome. To place multiple squares together you use the alignment marks on each to place them in just the right spot. I can't tell you how excited I was about this feature. I hung them up perfectly completely by myself.

Since I don't have a ton of wall space I chose to keep them to the left of me in a row using different accessories to meet my immediate needs. What's cool is I can change it up whenever I need to!

To the right of where I sit I incorporated the cork board into my little wall gallery. I LOVE getting some of this stuff up on the wall and off the desk, creating a ton more desk space for me and the boys.

The Wall Manager comes in white or black to fit any room. I think this would be perfect for above the boys' desks in their rooms whenever I get around to getting them! Room desks tend to be smaller and this would definitely help!

GIVEAWAY!

I have a $100 Staples gift card up for grabs - for one entry for a chance to win, leave a comment answering:

“How and where would you use the Martha Stewart Home Office with Avery Wall Manager products?”

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post

b) Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: "#SweepstakesEntry"; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post 

c) Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post

d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.

The Official Rules are available here.

This sweepstakes runs from 4/1/13-4/30/13.

Be sure to visit the Martha Stewart Home Office with Avery brand page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ reviews and find more chances to win!

Fort Friday!

Happy Fort Friday - the last one of March! 

Here at All for the Boys we celebrate Fridays with some awesome fort inspiration from around the web. Whether made of sheets, cardboard, wood, or sticks, forts are a place we can go to transport our minds to wherever we want to go. You can play, dream, relax, or create in a fort. Everything is better in a fort!

You can share your forts by emailing me, Facebook, or Instagram and tag @allfortheboys and #fortfriday (by contacting me you are giving me permition to share your photo on the blog. Let me know if you want it linked up anywhere) - some are tagging me properly and I'm not able to pull it up again later :( So if you don't see yours here, email it to me!

This boat/play house is too cute - from HomeAid Orange County on Flickr

A colorful blanket fort from Orvis

Forts can be so simple! from Amanda Oaks on Flickr

A side of the road blanket fort from Daniel Coleman

Cardboard makes a great fort too - never just toss out a box! from Home with Lindsay

You have to check out all the details in this cardboard playhouse from Rust & Sunshine